Listed 3 sub titles with search on: The inhabitants for wider area of: "MASSAGETES Ancient country IRAN" .
MASSAGETES (Ancient country) IRAN
Massagetae (Massagetai), a numerous and powerful tribe who dwelt in
Asia on the plains to the E. of the Caspian and to the S. of the Issedones, on
the E. bank of the Araxes. Cyrus, according to story, lost his life in a bloody
fight against them and their queen Tomyris. (Herod. i. 205-214; Justin. i. 8.)
They were so analogous to the Scythians that they were reckoned as members of
the same race by many of the contemporaries of Herodotus, who has given a detailed
account of their habits and manner of life. From the exactness of the geographical
data furnished by that historian, the situation of this people can be made out
with considerable precision. The Araxes is the Jaxartes, and the immense plain
to the E. of the Caspian is that steppe land which now includes Sungaria and Mongolia,
touching on the frontier of Eygur, and extending to the chain of the Altai. The
gold and bronze in which their country abounded were found in the Altai range.
Strabo (xi. pp. 512--514) confirms the statements of the Father of History as
to the inhuman practices and repulsive habits of these earliest specimens of the
Mongolian race. It may be observed that while Niebuhr (Klein Schrift. p. 362),
Bockh (Corp. Inscr. Graec. pl. xi. p. 81) and Schafarik (Slav. Alt. vol. i. p.
279) agree in assigning them to the Mongol stock, Von Humboldt (Asie Centrale,
vol. i. p. 400) considers them to have belonged to the Indo-European family.
Alexander came into collision with these wandering hordes, during
the campaign of Sogdiana, B.C. 328. (Arrian, Anab. iv. 16, 17.) The Massagetae
occur in Pomponius Mela (i. 2. § 5), Pliny (vi. 19), and Ptolemy (vi. 10. § 2,
13. § 3): afterwards they appear as Alani.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
(Old Persian Daha): nomadic tribe in the south of modern Kazakhstan. The name
is also spelled Daai, Dai, or Daoi.
The Central-Asian steppe has been the home of nomad tribes for centuries.
These nomads roamed across the plains and incidentally attacked the Achaemenid
empire. The Persians called these nomads the Saka, the Greeks knew them as the
Scythians.
One of the tribes was known as the Daha, which is the Persian word
for 'robbers'. This name need not surprise us; nomad tribes often received names
like this from the people in the towns who suffered from their raids. For example,
in the tenth century CE, the Europeans compared the Magyars to the greatest barbarians
they had ever known, the Huns; when the Magyars finally settled, they kept using
this name and their country is still called Hungary. Probably, 'Daha' was a similar
proud nickname.
A memory of these savage days seems to be preserved in the Avestan
legend that the prophet Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrism, was killed by
the Dahae. In fact, this is impossible, because the Dahae and Zarathustra are
separated by at least five centuries. However, it suggests that the atrocity of
this particular tribe was proverbal.
The Dahae are mentioned for the first time in the Daiva inscription
of the Persian king Xerxes (486-465); he mentions them as one of the satrapies
that listened to his orders. Since they are not mentioned in any inscription by
king Darius the Great, we may assume that Xerxes subdued the Dahae.
The Greek researcher Herodotus calls the Dai a Persian nomad tribe:
The Persian nation contains a number of tribes, and the ones which Cyrus assembled
and persuaded to revolt were the Pasargadae, Maraphii, and Maspii, upon which
all the other tribes are dependent. [...] Other tribes are the Panthialaei, Derusiaei,
Germanii, all of which are attached to the soil, the remainder -the Dai, Mardi,
Dropici, Sagarti, being nomadic. (Herodotus, Histories 1.125; tr. by Aubrey de
Selincourt).
If this short catalogue goes back to an authentic list from the days
of Cyrus the Great (559-530), we may assume that the Dahae took part in the rebellion
against the Median king Astyages in 550, but were dependent on one of the main
tribes, i.e. the Pasargadae, the Maraphii, or the Maspii.
Being nomads, the Dahae were not living on one place. In the fourth
century CE, they lived on the lower reaches of the river Syrdar'ya, the ancient
Jaxartes. It is very probable that this was their homestead in Xerxes' days too,
because he mentions the Dahae, the Saka haumavarga and the Saka tigrakhauda in
one breath, and these two tribes certainly lived in this neighborhood. In the
age of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great, they lived in the neigborhood
of Hyrcania.
The Dahae were famous for their mounted archers. When Alexander the
Great tried to subject the Achaemenid empire, the Dahae loyally supported the
Persian king Darius III during the battle of Gaugamela (October 1, 331). When
this king was killed by Bessus (a nobleman who wanted to continue the struggle
against the invaders), the Dahae sided with him, and -later- with the Iranian
warlord Spitamenes. Later, they switched allegiance to Alexander, and they played
a very important role in his conquest of the Punjab.
The tribe of the Dahae disintegrated after the fall of the Achaemenid
empire. Older sub-tribal formations became independent tribes, such as the Xanthians
and Pissyri. Another tribe was that of the Parni, who went south in the third
century BCE and founded the Parthian empire. In 155, they subjected what was left
of the 'mother tribe'.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
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